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Being a mathematician with mathematician friends, my friends and I occasionally like to joke about the peculiarities of the English language. This one came up recently:

Obviously, most English sentences and phrases cannot be read backwards and forwards and maintain the same meaning. For instance, "watch this" and "this watch" have clearly different meanings. In mathematics, we call this non-commutativity, and it is deeply interesting. So the question is, can anyone think of a phrase or sentence which has the same semantic meaning when the words are read from right to left?

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  • Do you want a sentence that you are likely to find, or are redundancies in the sentence okay? Because some of my engineer friends write sentences that are grammatically correct and can be read this way, but only because the sentences are redundant.
    – PixPrefect
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 16:14
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    You generally won't find such sentences in English because word order is significant in determining argument structure. Sentences are far more complicated than functions or even relations, and in general commutativity is not possible, nor desirable. And it's not really semantic, even if you find one that plays backwards; it's just a random occurrence, governed probly by pragmatics, not semantics. Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 16:57
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    @JohnLawler I thought you'd done really well there, until I tried to read it backwards. Disappointed. :(
    – Frank
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 17:17
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    I've given up, for now at least. But I got far enough to think that there's going to be a solution that's a bit less basic than most of the suggestions so far. Here's as far as I got, not the same meaning both ways but meaningful both ways, perhaps it could be worked on... "This question to us demands wisdom".
    – Rupe
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 17:54
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    Related, not dupe: english.stackexchange.com/q/31163/13804. "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
    – cobaltduck
    Commented Jan 27, 2016 at 19:54

10 Answers 10

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Is it crazy how saying sentences backwards creates backwards sentences saying how crazy it is?

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    Again, this is kind of a word-wise palindrome. It's cool, but it works because the words are exactly the same backwards and forwards. Something that is asymmetric is slightly more interesting!
    – icurays1
    Commented Jan 28, 2016 at 4:21
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    @icurays1 But you asked for a word wise palindrome, didn't you? Or rather a word-wise palindrome must be semantically palindromic. But the what could a non-word-wise palindromic sentence that is semantically palindromic possibly be? "Cats hate felines"? Even if obviously uninteresting, does that at least fit all your criteria?
    – Mitch
    Commented Jul 30, 2017 at 19:31
  • @Mitch correct, I was looking to find something that was semantically palindromic but not necessarily word-wise palindromic. Your example works because the words "cats" and "felines" are synonyms. It's possible that this is the only possibility - unless perhaps there were two distinct words A and B, both true homonyms, such that A and B share alternate definitions. For example, "Cross to bear" reversed is "Bear to cross"; I've use different meanings of "cross" and "bear" here, but they're not quite semantically equivalent.
    – icurays1
    Commented Jul 30, 2017 at 20:46
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Am I as bored as you are? Are you as bored as I am?

The words, intact, are maintained in both directions. The meaning is the same but the words are different:

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  • Super clever. I like this one. It does have a sort of symmetry of the form ABBA though, which is why it works, but the fact that it's broken into two distinctly different statements is neat.
    – icurays1
    Commented Jun 23, 2015 at 17:08
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My first thought was "Listen, you!" It works both ways. It's short and simple (like me.)

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  • This is closer to what I'm thinking of - two distinct words A and B such that AB has the same semantic meaning as BA (ignoring punctuation). Nice!
    – icurays1
    Commented Jan 28, 2016 at 4:22
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Watch this watch

Unless I've misunderstood the question, of course.

EDIT: And in case using the same first and last word is cheating, how about

Path a route (eg. through a maze)

The reverse form still makes sense, just about, I think.

Essentially for an A-B-C structure you'd need pairs of words that are both nouns and verbs, and have the same meaning in both senses. It's an interesting thing to think about.

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  • This works, but it's kind of cheating imo because it's of the form A-B-A. Something of the form A-B-C such that C-B-A means the same thing would be neat.
    – icurays1
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 16:45
  • That's brilliant. I discounted anything with an implied you because I got caught up in structure.
    – PixPrefect
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 16:46
  • Watch a chow is palindromic phonetically: /wačəčaw/. English spelling has many arbitrary and unsystematic aspects that make it unsuitable for palindromes. But, since spoken language is the real language, that's the place to look for real patterns. Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 16:52
  • @icurays1 I don't know if it really counts as A-B-A. Isn't it more (A)-B-C-D, since (you) is the subject, and "watch" serves different functions as B & D?
    – PixPrefect
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 17:04
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One of the sentences I, an eleven year old, found that stays the same backwards is:

mr owl ate my metal worm

... and backwards it is still:

  • mr owl ate my metal worm.
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    Hello and welcome to the ELU :-). That's a great palindrome! Unfortunately, I don't think that's what the OP is asking about (they want a sentence in which word order can be rearranged backwards while keeping the words intact, not one which you can spell backwards to get the same meaning). But the question is tagged as 'palindrome' so you are kind of right. Anyway I like the sentence :-).
    – Lucky
    Commented May 13, 2015 at 17:17
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I

Go

A is A.

Wasted days are days wasted.

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"Right are you." "You are right." (Many words can be substituted for "right," e.g., "married;" & other pronouns for "you," e.g., "they are happy" / "happy are they.")

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    Basically, any copular clause where both the subject and the predicative complement over the subject are of a type that can appear as both subject and predicative complement over the subject qualifies, as long as both refer to the same thing. Less awkward-sounding examples would be “John is my brother / My brother is John” or “Synonyms are words that have the same meaning / Words that have the same meaning are synonyms”. Commented May 11, 2015 at 16:11
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I really like your examples because they show that one can permute (rearrange) the words in a sentence and maintain the same meaning. Mathematically neat!
    – icurays1
    Commented Jan 28, 2016 at 4:19
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“Stop now.” And many other two-word sentences would qualify.

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Now that I've played around with this, the only way it can work is if the subject and the direct object are the same; otherwise, it will reverse the actions.

I drove myself.

Myself drove I.

While it sounds weird, it does mean the same thing, unlike this case, where the DO is different.

I drove Jerry.

Jerry drove I.

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    They're ungrammatical; does that count? Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 16:53
  • @John I guess it depends on context. I've heard "Myself drove I" used in poetry, but poetry doesn't really functions by "English" rules.
    – PixPrefect
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 17:01
  • I think it's not really a meme that translates into English that well. Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 17:02
  • Well, English relies more on order than case, so I can agree with that. It's still fun to think about though. :)
    – PixPrefect
    Commented Jul 8, 2014 at 17:05
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I have just attended a seminar entitled "speech-accompanying gestures". "Gestures accompanying speech" would have the same meaning, I think. Not a sentence, though.

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